Henry George's Quotes

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

How many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?

He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.

That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one.

There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism.

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.

The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.

How can a man be said to have a country when he has not right of a square inch of it.

Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.

The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

Mad, is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other generals.

We are come for your good, for all your goods.

I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months.

Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance.

How is the Empire?

My father was frightened of his mother; I was frightened of my father, and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me.

Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government.

I venture to allude to the impression which seemed generally to prevail among their brethren across the seas, that the Old Country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her colonial trade against foreign competitors.

Is it possible that my people live in such awful conditions? I tell you, Mr Wheatley, that if I had to live in conditions like that I would be a revolutionary myself.